Conrad Black should be allowed to face the panel considering stripping him of the Order of Canada based on his U.S. criminal convictions because an oral hearing is “the only way he can properly and fairly” defend himself on a complex issue, his lawyer will argue in federal court Friday.

Calling the case a “unique situation” — no court in the country has ever weighed in on matters related to the removal of an honour, and no one has ever had their Order of Canada revoked based on a foreign conviction — Lord Black’s lawyer, Peter Howard, will argue that if his client is denied a chance to address the federal Advisory Council eye-to-eye, there will be “an immediate and irreversible impact” on his rights.

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Both Mr. Howard and a Department of Justice lawyer representing the council declined to comment Wednesday, but recently filed documents give a peek into what each side plans to argue before a judge in Toronto this week.

The media baron and the awarding body will square off over whether the court should step in and compel the Advisory Council to do something it has never done before: Allow an Order of Canada recipient facing public dishonour the chance to stand before an 11-person panel well-known for its confidential deliberations.

Lord Black told the National Post this week he is not planning to be at the half-day hearing on Friday and said the controversy is “rather overblown.”

“It is a question of rights and procedure, and should not be misrepresented or over-played as a personal drama,” he said in an email.

Whether I am actually an officer of [the Order of Canada] is not especially important, but the process is

Only four recipients have had the honour revoked, including Alan Eagleson, the hockey lawyer found guilty of fraud, and First Nations leader David Ahenakew after a conviction — later overturned — for inciting hatred against Jews.

According to the official policy on Order of Canada terminations, the council can advise the Governor General that someone should be stripped of the award if that person has been convicted of a criminal offence or does something out of step with the “generally recognized standards of public behaviour.”

The council told Lord Black it was considering pulling his award in a letter last summer and that he could make written submissions, which could include his letters of support from former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, a former assistant United States attorney and Hollinger’s former acting president — all of which have since been filed to Federal Court.

“I write to express my conviction that my friend of more than 20 years, Conrad Black, not be judged negatively in any review of his status as an Officer of the Order of Canada,” Mr. Kissinger wrote in a July 12, 2012, letter to Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, who heads the council made up of men and women from academia, government, courts, aboriginal groups and arts organizations.

Dickensian characterizations from Mr. Bumble spring to mind for that position

The court documents paint a picture of Lord Black as a man seeking not only to convince the council that his U.S. convictions relating to his time at Hollinger Inc. would never have stood up in a Canadian court, but also that he did nothing inappropriate when he was seen removing boxes of files from the media company’s Toronto office, in violation of a court order.

“Whether I am actually an officer of [the Order of Canada] is not especially important, but the process is,” Lord Black said in his email to the Post, “and no one should be threatened with deprivation of such an honour on the basis of anonymous officials in a secret proceeding slavishly following a rogue foreign judge, in a, to say the least, unrigorous finding.”

Lawyers for the council, which votes on award nominations and terminations before giving the Governor General the final say, argue Lord Black’s request for an oral hearing is unnecessary, not a matter for the courts, and simply “premature” because the council has not yet decided whether to revoke Lord Black’s honour.

“In the event the Governor General determines that Mr. Black’s appointment to the Order should be terminated, it will be open to Mr. Black to challenge any alleged procedural defects,” wrote lawyers Christine Mohr and Andrea Bourke. “However, no such determination has been made.”

But Mr. Howard will argue that by then it might be too late — a termination has never been subject to judicial review, he wrote, so it is far from clear whether Lord Black would have a legal leg to stand on.

“Dickensian characterizations from Mr. Bumble spring to mind for that position,” Mr. Howard argues, making a literary reference to the hypocritical, self-important Oliver Twist character.

The council’s legal position is typical and quite straightforward, said University of Ottawa professor Carissima Mathen, because it tries to “cut the whole thing off at the pass” by arguing the matter should not be before a federal judge now, if ever.

“You always try to use a logic argument to cut it off as quickly as you can,” she said. “They’re trying to say, ‘This is not the time to be doing this.’ That’s a common strategy.”

The documents show both sides plan on nodding to former prime minister Jean Chrétien, albeit for competing purposes: Mr. Howard will argue that a man’s reputation is at stake so Lord Black deserves a “high degree of procedural fairness,” as was decided in a case that pitted Mr. Chrétien against the federal government over the so-called sponsorship scandal; Ms. Mohr and Ms. Bourke will use the high-profile Black v. Chrétien case, in which Lord Black argued he should be able to keep his Canadian citizenship but still accept a peerage to the British House of Lords, to argue that an oral hearing has nothing to do with Lord Black’s rights because “no Canadian citizen has a right to an honour.”

The Department of Justice did not respond to request for comment as of deadline Wednesday. A spokesperson for the Office of the Secretary to the Governor General declined to comment.

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